When told by a film director to “just be yourself,” Bob Dylan replied, “which one?” Another time he said, “there are so many sides to me I’m round.” He was a folksinger, a bluesman, a songster, a vagabond, a troubador, a ragamuffin. He was a clown, a minstrel, a gypsy. He was a writer, a poet, a playwright, an actor. He was a producer, a songwriter, a harmonica-for-hire. He was a rock-n-roller (decreed by his high-school yearbook as destined “to join Little Richard”). He was a rebel, a dissident, a curmudgeon, a loner. He was an artist, a sculpter, a comedian, a satirist, an ironist. He was free-thinking and freewheeling; both an intellectual and an everyman, both a scholar and a gentleman; he was at once an idealist, a realist, and a cynic. As a Christian he wrote love songs and disguised them as hymns, as a Jew he went to Jerusalem and prayed at the Wailing Wall. Liam Clancy said he was “a shape-shifter” from Irish mythology. He was Charlie Chaplin, Rimbaud, Woody Guthrie, Dylan Thomas, Brando in the Wild One. He was Robert Zimmerman, Bob, Bobby, Elston Gunn, Bling Boy Grunt, Lucky Wilbury, Alias, Jack Frost, Jack Fate, Sergei Petrov. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, twelve Grammys, and a Nobel (to name just a few). Seventy-seven years ago he was born. Sixty-one years ago he played a Little Richard song on the school stage and pissed everybody off. Fifty-six years ago he released his first studio album when he was barely twenty years old. Fifty-three years ago he “went electric” and pissed everybody off. Ninteen years ago he appeared in an episode of Dharma and Greg and pissed me off. Four years ago my little brother saw the back of his head in a hotel on Anastasia Island. One year ago he released his most recent album. He has released thirty-seven studio albums as well as countless live albums and bootlegs. He has written over five-hundred songs, many considered amongst the greatest that will ever be written. Whilst recording the first ever music video, for his song subterranean Homesick Blues, he held a sign for one second which read “Get born.” He is forever young; both ageless and timeless, stubbornly defying lineararity (or as he put it, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” And yes, he can sing pretty damn well indeed. Cheers, to Bob Dylan.
Thanks to “Lou Graves ” (Fan of Bob Dylan )
